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10K views 34 replies 17 participants last post by  LesHastings 
#1 ·
Here is my newest project!

We usually take the winter off of working in the shop, we spend the winter months trapping bobcats. Most of the time I am home with the kids and cathing up on much needed office work. Even though it is noce to take a break from the dust and loud noise; it is also nice to return to it. We have been back in the shop for a month know making table lamps and working on custom orders. My new project for the next few days is this soon to be table lamp. Can you see the beauty? I have taken pictures of the wood before I start working on it and will continue to take pictures until it is finished.

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As you can see the wood has a lot of weatherd gray wood, this will be taken down so you can see the dark rich wood grain. I will also use the dremmel tool to cut off the small branches and smooth up the jagged edges. The whole piece will be sandblasted, this helps get the junk out of the crevices and makes the red part of the wood really shine.

This piece is going to be shortened a bit and it also needs to be leveled up.

The base is far from being ready, it too will have to leveled and cleaned up. You can see a few colored markings on the top, this is art work compliments of my two younger kids.

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This last pictures gives you an idea of how the lamp will sit on the base. I should have more pictures to post this evening. My goal is to have this lamp ready to be sprayed by this weekend.

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I am now off to the shop to sift out the blasting grit, there is a bunch of junk in it that is clogging up the hoses.

Have a great day and will post more soon!!!
 
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#4 ·
Hi Candy,

This is going to be an interesting post. I will enjoy seeing you bringing out the hidden beauty in these pieces of wood. I will be honest with you, I probably would not have seen a lamp inside the juniper. Sadly that comes from being "artistically challenged". But I do enjoy seeing those who are gifted in this area plying their skills and transmuting a seemingly mundane piece of wood into a gorgeous piece of functional art.

This blog is going to be fun and I am sure will be enjoyed.

Thanks for sharing this experience with the rest of us.
 
#5 ·
For Sandblasting we use walnut shell 20/40 , it pits the wood abit but can be sanded out. I like using 40/60 because it polishes the red wood real nice, but takes forever to actually get the trash off. We use aluminum oxide on some of our larger pieces that dont fit in the cabinet blaster, we can recover it quite well and it seems to work just as good.
 
#6 ·
When we first started workign with juniper we struggled to figure out what we were going to do with each piece, now that we have been doing this for 3 years we can look at a piece and kind of know what to do with it. If we find a piece that stumps us and we just do not know what to do with it, we set it aside, in a spot that we see it often and eventually it will just "hit us" and we know what to make out of it. My husband is working on a piece like that know. We had no idea what to do with it, but if you turn it just right you can make a lamp put of it. I will have to post a picture of it, maybe even start a new blog on that piece as well.

Well better get back out to the shop and make more dust.. more pictures are coming this evening.

Thanks every one for looking!!
 
#9 ·
Scott, I dont think any of us is "artistically challenged" I believe that we all have some type of artistic ability and more often than not we try and force an idea to come to life instead of just relaxing and letting it come to you. I am not a "wood whisperer" hahaha but i have noticed that the more I try to make something come to life, the more frustrated I get. So I quit trying so hard and it just comes to me. The biggest part of woodworking is not making a chore out of it and keeping it fun.

Mario, I sometimes forget how fortunate I am to live here in the remote corner of colorado, we are able to go out in the trees and find our specific natural pieces that have yet to be touched by machinery, plus it is a great time that we have together as a family. We must never forget where our wood comes from and always try to do as much as possible together as a family
 
#10 ·
Sandblasting and sanding the Juniper Lamp

Tim, my husband worked on the base, it took 2 hours to get it leveled, shaped and sanded. The first two pictures are of the base after it has been run through the planer. This base is made out of burled cottonwood.




Corners have been rounded and everything shaped before sanding.


After two hours this base is done and looks great, the colors are really going to come out when we spray the finish on it.



This is where I started sandblasting, the red dark wood has started to turn gray on the outsude layer because the wood is aging. If you have a green piece of wood, you can usually see a lot of dark red and white colored wood. I dont like to sand off the red, if you use to gritty of paper it will take all the color out and make it look faded. So I blast the red, then use the sander with 800 grit and polish it up. As I sandblast you can see the colors starting to come out. We do not blast the gray weathered wood, we usually sand or grind it off to get down to the wood grain.


Pure beauty starting to come out, these pictures show the color better and how clean it is all looking. I have sanded off the gray wood with 180 grit and now it is time to start the fine sanding process. I am excited to get this one done and see how it looks after it is sprayed.




I almost forgot and got ahead of myself, we will have to drill the holes for the cord before I sand anymore. I dont want to get it all sanded then scratch it while we are moving it around and drilling holes.

Well that is it for today I will get more pictures on here tomorrow, I should have the lamp finished and ready to mount on the base.
 
#18 ·
Drilling holes for the cord

Okay I had the lamp almost completely sanded before I was able to get the holes drilled. I myself have only drilled a few lamps so my husband helps out with this. It is not as easy as it seems, you have to make sure that you are aiming just right so you come out in the right spot so you end up through the bottom of the lamp.

This first shot is of course the first hole that is being drilled, in the second shot you can see where the drill bit is coming out.



Now starting at the exit hole we will drill another hole that will hopefully come out at about where my husbands index finger is


We hit the mark! Now we repeat the step with this exit hole, coming out where his index finger is again


Just repeat the steps until you come out throught the bottom of the lamp. The tricky part is, is not to have your drill bit come out where there are deep grooves, becuase these holes can not be patched and you will see the cord

And that is how you drill holes for your cord in a juniper lamp
 
#21 ·
Sanding is complete. Ready to run cord and patch holes

Well this lamp is almost done. Tomorrow we will mount the lamps to the bases, run the cords and Tim will patch the lamps. I have not yet got my learning on how to do this. I have the basics down but havent tried it. He has pretty much mastered it so I will let him keep on with this task. We will have 10 lamps finished this weekend and next week we will start on a floor lamp and end table. These are custom orders that need to go out. I think I will blog about them as well.

Anyway here is the lamp all ready to be finished. It is a bit dusty but it is going to really pop when we spray the finish. In the last picture you can see the grooves that I was talking about, you dont want to drill through one of these when trying to run a cord.



 
#26 ·
It is finished

We finally finished this lamp on Wednesday and i spent all day yesterday taking pictures and getting our website updated. It took almost 2 hours to get this lamp patched and the holes blended. In this last batch of lamps we have 9 new lamps and would have had them finished on Tuesday but, it was real cold out so we built a fire in the shop, well the wind was blowing so hard that it was making the flames come out the door, then it started to smoke and man the shop was filled with smoke and some falling soot. So we poored water on the fire am got the air circulating and called it a day off.

Anyway here is the finished product





To see more pictures of this lamp just visit our website at www.rockymountain-twist.com and click on the picture of the lamp that you would like to see.
 
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